Alice Klein

speaker

164 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 16 Sep

Alice Klein’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.

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The World, the Universe and Us · The Mystery of Childbirth Is Finally Being Unravelled · 16 Sep 2026 podcast

Well, basically a lot of what we know about the labor process comes from studying other animals like mice and sheep.

And in most of them, the trigger for labor is pretty simple.

When the baby's finished growing and ready to come out, the pregnant female stops producing a hormone called progesterone.

As this hormone drops, it tells the genes needed for labor to turn on, and then that gets things moving.

But in humans, progesterone levels in the blood don't actually fall when labor starts.

So that's something that has really perplexed scientists for a long time.

that

Well, one of the first clues was the finding that the human uterus is packed with immune cells.

So scientists began wondering, well, what are they doing there?

And then some groups started finding that towards the end of pregnancy, the uterus starts releasing these signaling molecules called chemokines and cytokines into the mother's blood.

And they found the role of these signaling molecules is to recruit immune cells called monocytes, which are a type of white blood cell, and bring them into the uterus.

You can imagine it

Yeah, I mean, do your children know that you think that they are parasites?

I hope they're not going to listen to this episode.

But yes, the fetus is actually held separate from the uterus by the placenta and a lining called the decidua.

And also the mother's immune system is held in check by these specialised cells called regulatory T cells.

But yes, there is a conflict and sometimes it doesn't always work to hold the system in check.

So a group at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto found that these white blood cells accumulate in the muscle layer of the uterus.

And once they're in the muscle, they actually turn into a different kind of immune cell called an inflammatory macrophage.

So then the next thing to do was to find out what these macrophages were doing in the uterus muscle.

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